


Mercy

by AnOddSock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A brief mention but that is where canon starts after the rescue, Aftermath of Torture, Buried Alive, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dean Winchester's Soul, Dean in Hell, First Meetings, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Character Undeath, Mentions of Death, Purple Prose, Rescue, and the canonical fix-it, trueform!Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Time runs differently in hell, but when your time is up, it’s up, and nothing will stem the tides of change.A story of an Angel of the Lord plucking the righteous man out of the black.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling purple prose-ish a while ago and started this, not sure where it was leading, and then realised it fit for my Bad Things Happen Bingo Square "not used to freedom" and manged to conclude it last weekend so... voila!

Reprieve in hell was a fickle thing, it came at the expense of another’s pain. It came perched on the tip of a blade or inside the flickers of flame directed at another. You held out until you didn't, and everybody cracked in the end; a small splinter that grew until you caved in on yourself and became hollow.

An endless feedback loop, a snake eating itself, a spiralling path that turned ever inwards; down and down into depths darker at every turn.

Dean had been black for years, if one could count time in hell in the rotations of the earth and passage across the stars. It seemed an eternity, and the reason for his own reprieve was long lost to the recesses of memory. He turned the screw tighter, and cut deeper, and burned hotter and faster and crueller so as not to look back. His own pain like a phantom in the night that never gave up the chase, his own fear a choking fog that drove him ever onward to pulling apart those around him; so that he might be saved the punishment himself.

Not a willing pupil, but an attentive one, an eager learner; how to carve, how to make them sing. They all sang eventually, they all fell to his knife and his whims. 

Reprieve in hell was never a sure thing, and always the terror of being inadequate made him righteous in his anger. How dare anyone, or anything, put him back on the whipping post when he’d worked so long, and so hard, and endured so much to be free of it?

But resolve in hell was a thin thread stretched taut, and he never did his surety waver more than in those last moments. The crash came loud and long, a booming cacophony that echoed from above as though all the walls were falling inward. It grew louder, and nearer, and he gripped his blood stained weapon with all the strength he had. He was certain, for moments that spanned an eternity, that his luck had run out. Alistair must be displeased to come for him with such ferocity, such wrath. Screaming and clashing of blades that seared through his skull and rendered him motionless in fear.

Surely he was done for, the pain about to swallow him whole, the darkness come to consume him.

Light erupted ahead of the noise, the very sight of it overwhelming to his much-dimmed vision. He turned, and struck, and met his match. A flaming, winged thing so very far from Alistair’s blackness. Resplendent and terrifying, it battered his attack away with a blow that set his bones to rattling.

He snarled, and threw himself forward with fists and nails and teeth, and was caught up, wrapped in tendrils of power and strength that smothered and burned. He thrashed and kicked, and threw back his head with a wail. This was worse, whatever punishment he’d earned now, than anything he’d felt before. It seared him from the inside out and he looked down to see blackened, charred flesh fall from his body. Flakes and ash peeling away everywhere the light touched him.

Fighting raged above and behind him, roars of anger and shouts of victory reached his ears. Some _thing_ looked down at him, peered close and tilted him this way and that. He cowered under its gaze, a gaze that seemed like a mirror reflecting all his brokenness back at him. He saw the ruined, scarred mess of his soul in many giant lidless eyes and clenched his jaw to keep back tears. He knew what he must look like, and he didn’t want to see it.

“Dean Winchester has been saved.”

_No!_

Fire red and coal dark walls sped past him as he was thrust upward with a lurch, the thing that gripped him held tight and kept him close. 

_Stop, no!_

“Yes, you have been saved.”

_You can’t._

“It has already been done.”

_Saved for what?_

“For earth, for your purpose.”

_I have no purpose, I’m just a tool, I wield and am wielded._

“You are many things, a soldier yes, a brother, a man, perhaps a saviour… it remains to be seen.”

Brother? No? It couldn’t be. That way lay danger.

“Would you like to see the sun again? To be free again?”

_There is no sun here, it has all been taken. There is no freedom, not from what we’ve done._

“I can return all you have lost. Give all of it back to you.”

_Look at me, I’m not worth saving. Where could I go, that would have me?_

“Sam, I think, will be glad to see you.”

_You can’t! I’m not… I would hurt him!_

“Why?”

_It’s what I do, that’s my purpose, don’t you see?_

“I see a man, broken, but not ruined.”

_I don’t think I count as a man, anymore._

Time slowed, the fire grew colder and the speed of their ascent got slower. Heaviness weighed down on his head, pressure that spiked pain through his being, an ache behind his teeth that ate its way upward.

“It’s all falling away now, all of it left behind. Look back, you can see it.”

He screwed his eyes closed and refused until gentle light suffused him and he gasped.

“Look Dean, it is all alright.”

One enormous eye, on the face of a great lion, held his attention. “You are not withered anymore.”

He glanced back, and down, and saw his own form _glowing_. Star bright and effervescent, and a trail of dying flesh that floated away from him, burned off by the intensity of the flames around his body.

_What did you do?_

“Returned you to the way you should be, unmarred.”

_It’s all…. gone?_

“Memories remain, the taint of them is lifted.”

_Why? I don’t deserve it._

“That is not for you to decide. What I see beneath, of who you really are, that is what matters.”

The pressure increased until he convulsed with it, walls closed in and pressed upon him. The being that held him didn’t seem fazed, or falter.

_Please don’t take me back to Sam, it won’t be the same. He’ll see what I really am._

“Forgiveness is a glorious thing Dean Winchester, and I believe your brother is better at it than most.”

_And you, do you forgive me?_

He needed to know, to feel it. The stink of the pit was still in his nose, still lingered on his breath and he wanted nothing more than to be free of it.

Blue irises, emanating light, shone brighter as they looked at him. “I saved you, I think that speaks for itself."

 _What am I supposed to do?_

“Live, survive, be the light in the world you were always meant to be.”

Saving people, hunting things, the family business… he hadn’t recalled these things in a lifetime. They felt so alien now. Whatever escape he had found came at the expense of his humanity— he had thrown it away like an unwanted gift. He couldn’t save anyone now, not when he was the shadow himself, when he was the monster under the bed that all fathers warned their sons about. He had drowned himself in evil to spare himself a little pain, he was well on the way to having eyes as black as his soul. How could he go back to cutting away the evil in others, as though he didn’t know where it came from?

_Who will tell me what to do?_

“No-one, you will be **free**.”

_Freedom is just a length of rope, an illusion. Freedom isn’t for me. I’m not made for it._

“You will be, again, in time.”

He felt the press and roughness of earth and stone crowd around him. A physical weight on his being. The Angel— he knew now that was what it was— that carried him thrust harder, forcing them forward. _Through._ To the surface.

To life. Life that was so far beyond his scope of understanding, life that he had left behind, turned away from. His hope for it had been abandoned to survive the cut of the knife. 

_You can’t do this, I’m not ready!_

Roots struck out and barred their path and his saviour slowed, carefully pushed them aside like a tender gardener.

“There is no time to waste, Dean Winchester. Life is waiting for you, the world needs you.”

 _I’m not strong enough, I don’t want it, I don’t want to be needed_. 

“No-one ever does, fate has her plans.”

The pressure was suffocating, and he remembered suddenly that life came with breath and breath needed space for air, and there was no air here in this underground place.

 _It’ll hurt, won’t it._ The worst things always did.

“I know little of pain, but I fear it will not come easily. Your body awaits you, go with grace, Dean Winchester. I have faith in you.”

_What’s your name?_

The Angel paused. “Castiel. You will not remember me, I think, not like this anyway. It has been good to know you, and I will know you again.”

With one final thrust, one parry through the jaws of the earth that split apart atoms with a single push of energy, he felt crushed through dirt, and wood, and bone. Light flashed behind his eyes, energy fractured him apart and knit him back together. He became _whole._ Spirit and flesh reunited.

He gasped.

And opened his eyes in the dark.

Life in the ground is such a fragile thing. Survival against better judgement is an instinct one cannot fight.

So he clawed, and scraped, and dug, and thrashed until the coffin was empty. Until he was free. Until the hollowness in his chest was filled deeply, until sunlight burned his eyes and he knew reprieve had found him; and it had come at the hands of light, the mercy of blue eyes, and the revival of his soul.

He rubbed the place in his chest where the dark had taken root and resolved to fill it with something else.

_Coming home, Sammy. Coming back to life. Whatever that means._

He stood on shaky legs, and started walking.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked my little fic, I always wondered what this moment was like for Dean and it was fun to finally write it.
> 
> Please let me know if there's a tag I need to add, I couldn't think if anything else was missing from the list.


End file.
